Category Archives: The Future of…

“Consumers are statistics. Customers are people.”–Stanley Marcus

The 2019 Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas. Considering the 180,000 attendees, perhaps we should be calling it the Statistics Electronics Show, per Stanley Marcus

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

“They say the Universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.”–Steven Wright

Autonomous vehicles? Flying cars? The concepts are exciting, but the truth is: most of us will still be driving manually on the ground for many years to come. And that means dealing with the motorist’s most persistent annoyance. Congestion. It costs time and money and tries patience. But advanced vehicles are not necessarily required to solve the problem. In the final episode of the Future Driving series on the Seeking Delphi™ podcast, we explore intelligent traffic control with Rapid Flow Technologies CEO, Griffin Schultz. Advanced sensors, edge computing and artificial intelligence are helping cities to lessen the occurrence–and the frustration–of traffic congestion.

“The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.”–Elon Musk

“We wanted flying cars; what we got is 140 characters.”–Peter Thiel

Well, guess what? We now have 280 characters, and we may finally be getting flying cars. Well, some of us may get the flying cars. They clearly won’t be mass market cheap for a very long time, if ever. Part 2 of the Seeking Delphi™ Future Driving series presents an interview with Kaushik Rajashekara. He is a University of Houston professor and IEEE fellow who has been tracking the subject for decades. Me? I’ve been vaguely following it ever since The Jetsons.

“Land on Mars, half a million dollars–a round trip ticket. It can be done.”–Elon Musk

“It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.”–Ray Bradbury

Even as NASA successfully deployed its latest Mars lander, Elon Musk was reasserting his intentions to go to Mars. Literally. Himself. I hope I live long enough to see if he makes it.

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

–In a wide ranging interview, Elon Musk flatly stated that he doesn’t just want to send others to Mars, he wants to move there himself. He set the odds of his doing so at 70%. I’m guessing Vegas would set odds a bit longer than that.

“The Promise of Autonomous Vehicles is Great.”–Dan Lipinski

“My opinion is that it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous vehicles.”–Elon Musk

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There’s no shortage of opinions on the viability of self-driving cars. Be you a bull or a bear, though, there is no denying that there is a plethora of big players banking on them with R&D spending.

The issues surrounding the technology are too many and complex to deal with all of them in a single podcast. And while things like collision avoidance, navigation, regulation, liability and public acceptance take up much of the debate over the technology, one key element has not so often been discussed. That would be connectivity. To assure safety and efficiency, to any degree greater than currently exists with manually driven cars, they need to be able to talk to each other.

In episode #26 of Seeking Delphi™ host Mark Sackler talks with Alex Wyglinski, president of IEEE’s Vehicle Technology Society and co-chair of the Community Development Working Group for IEEE Future Networks, on how wireless connectivity might enable the technology.

“We are approaching the end of the line for automobiles.”–Bob Lutz

Elon doesn’t believe in flying cars, either. But then his bread is buttered on a more conventional side. And he certainly isn’t shy about providing ever more driver auto-assist features to his Teslas. I’ll be talking to strong proponents of both autonomous and flying cars in the next two Seeking Delphi™ podcast episodes; in the mean time the manual vs. autonomous argument is all over this week’s news.

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Coming soon–a three-part Seeking Delphi™ podcast series on future driving–including episodes on self-driving cars and flying cars. Up first, Alex Wyglinski of IEEE on the importance of connectivity in self-driving cars.

“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride”–John F. Kennedy.

I wonder how JFK would have felt about an electric bike ride. Yes, an eBike. They are coming, as everything, but everything, seems to be adding technology.

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.